


Deeper

by farevenasdecidedtouse



Category: These and More Than These - Jason Webley (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-10-30 08:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10873242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farevenasdecidedtouse/pseuds/farevenasdecidedtouse
Summary: She’d been doing it since she could reach high enough.





	Deeper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [higuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/higuchi/gifts).



Tree-dappled sunlight gave way to the cool, dusty basement interior as Makeda pried back the metal bar holding the door in place. She’d been doing it since she could reach high enough, noticing it every Sunday leaving morning service in a bright crowd of elegant, hat-sporting ladies still laughing and energized by the choir’s last number. Chicken, Jeff, and Destiny trailed behind her in the gold afternoon light, all respected her claim to the place, had ever since she had first showed them there, one by one, to do whatever it was they did.

Makeda thought she had been born with a caul (“placenta,” doctor’s kid Destiny clarified) but she doubted that was really it. True, it was easier for her to tell what muggy August nights would be best to sneak over bedroom roof eaves and down her street, easier for her to tell everyone where to sit to see the patterns of the stars swirling around them, but she doubted that was it, at least much more than living four houses away since she was two. It was part game, part sacred ritual that none of them really understood—and in the end, wasn’t that what magic was?

One by one, blinking trails of light out of their eyes and fumbling their ways around broken pews and stacks of folding chairs, the group arranged themselves on the stone floor which still sported a few dusty footprints from the previous, less important, meeting. “Where’d y’all put the chalk?” Chicken asked, pale face earnestly nervous over Destiny’s school bag.

“Man, there’s one pocket. It’s probably under my sweater. You get your mom’s smokes?” Destiny asked.

“Yeah.” From one pocket of beat-up cargo pants Chicken produced a plastic baggie containing four white cylinders that looked nearly indistinguishable from the chalk in the dim light. “You sure about this? I mean, we never smoked before.”

“It’s to take the messages to the spirits,” Destiny replied, stepping over where Jeff had laid out the library books he’d brought along in the single beam of dust-clouded sunlight from the least overgrown window.

“You think there’s spirits there?”

“What else are we protecting ourselves from?”

"We never needed protecting before."

"Yeah, but this time one of them might notice if we're sending them messages."

"One of _what,_ though?" To one side of the argument Jeff began to draw a complicated chalk design that seemed to come from near the beginning of his mom's coffee table book on world religions. At the edges he set multiple Sacred Heart candles purchased from the bodega by Chicken’s house,  flicking them into flame with a lighter stamped with the sun.

“Back in the day, people thought the stars were just holes in the sky the sun shone through,” Makeda observed, her first contribution to the conversation since they’d left her house armed with more than just their knowledge of whatever it was they’d done for so long. Something in her tone made Destiny pause, put one slender hand on her shoulder.

“For real. We don’t have to do it like this today. Or ever,” she said, Chicken’s dirty blond hair flopping in an accompanying nod behind her.

“I think I have to.” Makeda didn’t elaborate, and Destiny didn't push it.

They all lowered themselves into the slight indentation around the floor drain, Destiny handing each of them a cigarette before passing around the sun lighter. Each of them took a drag—everyone made faces and Chicken started to cough, but already the stars and void had taken the place of church dinner crockery and dusty broken pews. "Countless stars," Jeff muttered. He grabbed Makeda's and Chicken's hands as Destiny grabbed them from the other side, grounding them in the tiny oasis of light separate from the dragon's hoards of spilled diamonds on blank nothingess whirling around them in the patterns with meanings that seemed just out of reach, meanings that—

“Makeda?”

_“Makeda was the Queen of Sheba.” Her mother’s fingers, gentle, running the blue pick through her hair. “She had as many demons and spirits as King Solomon, and just as many husbands as he had wives. Only woman who could keep up with him.”_

_"Destiny, come on! I want to show you something!"_

“What’s happening? She’s never done this before!”

“Duh, that’s the point. Makeda?”

_OL SONF VORSG GOHO IAD BALT LONSH CALZ VONPHO SOBRA ZOL ROR I TA NAZPSAD GRAA TA MALPRG DS HOLQ NOTHOA  
_

_"'The countless stars of heaven's field were mirrored in his silver shield...'"_

_"You're such a dork, Jeff."_

_"Hey, you got it too."_

"She's having a seizure! Destiny, what do we do?"

"I can't let go! Just hold still!"

_ZIMZ OD COMMAH TA NOBLOH ZIEN SOBA THIL GNONP PRGE ALDI DS VRBS OBOLE HGRSAM CASARM OHORELA CABA PIR DS ZONRENSG  
_

_"What... is it?"_

_"Scary black people magic. Woooooo."_

_"Shut up, Destiny. It's just something we know about."_

_"How? How did you find out about this?"_

_"I dunno. It's just always been here"_

“Makeda!”

_CAB ERM IADNAH PILAH FARZM ZVRZA ADNA GONO IADPIL DS HOM TOH BALTOH IPAM VL IPAMIS DS LOHOLO VEP ZOMDV POAMAL OD  
_

Paths branching in on each other like the Mandelbrot set poster on the third-period math class wall. Destiny finding her way out of the basement and all over the world, or staying to raise dogs, or hunt, or die. Jeff teaching and loving things and growing things. Chicken always just there, the bony angles and the Virginia accent and the clothes that never fit wandering through the South, sometimes with Destiny, sometimes alone. She saw them all alongside hers, feeding into each other, into other lines and branches until those branches ended and others grew from them, around them.

Except hers.

_BOGPA AAI TA PIAMO EL OD VOOAN ZACARE CA OD ODO CICLE QAA ZORGE LAP ZIRDO NOCO MAD  HOATH IAIDA_

_i will never be alone_

_i will never die_

 

 

 

She came to with her head on Chicken’s knees, the others squinting at her through a cloud of dust motes disturbed by their feet. "Did you see it?" she demanded, voice weak but loud in the complete silence.

Destiny started forward, red-threaded braids swinging around her shoulders. "See what?"

Pretending wasn't going to work anymore. Pretending the Enochian words she whispered at night, burning patterns into the darkness of her room, were something everyone could do. Pretending she was ordinary like the others who sat around her in the circle, reflecting her own light. She was surrounded by people—people who could help her, who she could show the burning wheels and the snakes and the meanings of every letter. All it would take would be her breaking silence, doing whatever it might take to understand. Even if she didn't have the words. Even if she had to burn the words onto walls, onto the air, onto her own flesh until the stars or spirits or pinpricks of sun let themselves be understood through her.

Slowly, extending a hand through the returning basement darkness, she let Jeff help her off the floor.


End file.
